9 Apr - 'Free Speech' and 'Right to Trial'

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Inside The Media Blackout Scandal in The Middle East’s Only Democracy
http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/04/06/inside-the-media-blackout-scandal-in-the-middle-easts-only-democracy/?success
Imagine that the US military ordered the arrest of the person who leaked the now-notorious video depicting US soldiers mowing down two Reuters journalists and a crowd of innocent Iraqis. Then imagine that a court then imposed a gag order forbidding all American reporters and bloggers from even mentioning the arrest of the leaker. What would the media blackout say about the state of American democracy?
Of course this hypothetical scenario would be unthinkable in a country like the US, which boasts a grand tradition of whisteblowing, and which has shield laws in 36 states. The reason I raised it was to dramatize the outrageous nature of a gag order in Israel that has forbidden journalists and bloggers from reporting on the so-called Anat Kam affair. Who is Kam and why is speaking her name a crime in the Israeli media?
To make a long story shorter, Kam is a 23-year-old Israeli journalist who allegedly procured confidential documents while she worked in an Israeli Army general’s office during her mandatory military service. The documents revealed that in 2007, Israeli Army forces assassinated a Palestinian Islamic Jihad member in direct contravention of a Supreme Court order that banned the killing of wanted militants if there was a reasonable chance to arrest them first. Two top Israeli military officials, former Central Command Chief  Major General Yair Naveh, Operations Directorate Head Major General Tal Russo, and Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, who directed the assault on Gaza in 2008 and 09, are said to have been incriminated in the documents.
Kam is believed to have photocopied the documents and passed them on to Uri Blau, a top national security reporter for the Israeli daily, Haaretz (Haaretz’s editor in chief has called any link between Kam and Blau “absurd,” however). Blau proceeded to publish an article detailing the contents of the documents, provoking the ire of the Israeli military, which since 1988 has demanded that journalists submit all “material relevant to the security of the state” to the military censor for review, and which compels all journalists seeking an official Israeli press card (GPO card) to sign on to the censorship policy. By all accounts, Blau submitted his article for review to the censor and was cleared for publication.
Kam was detained last December and placed under house arrest. However, news of her arrest only began to seep out into the news in March. Kam now awaits trial for treason and espionage, charges that could land her in prison for as long as 14 years.
Meanwhile, Blau is hiding out in London. According to multiple sources, Blau is terrified to return to Israel. His hard-hitting reports on Israeli Army abuses in the occupied West Bank have made him the bane of the military establishment. “At least ten journalists inside Israel have told me [Blau] is the real target,” a reporter working in Israel and Palestine told me. “And everyone is saying they’re simply prosecuting Kam to make an example out of her.”

At the risk of seeming unsympathetic to the reporter's plight - I am not - I thought a few 'Home Truths' were needed to establish context and 'Relative Virtue' in this affair : a commodity in short supply. From Comments

Israel is a fine case of "Worry about the splinter in your own eye." Which is not to justify terrorizing journalists of any stripe. Who remembers the writers killed in Iraq ? The imprisoned without charge in Iraq/AfPak and many more places ?
Israel is merely a more obvious example of the British and US - plus Australian, Canadian and many more - repressing ( of ) free speech.
In Australia it has been the case form many years now that a person can be questioned without warrant about 'terrorism' and jailed for 5 years if he tells even his spouse ! One of my early acquaintances online recounted a spell in detention re: the UK War Measures Act in the aftermath of 9/11.
But protection of whistleblowers ?
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/01/wh...
http://www.infowars.com/sibel-edmonds-speaks-ou...
Now that's just one FBI agent, right ?
Read and weep
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/08/polic...
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2010/01/priva...
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/08/socie...

Inside the Military Media Industrial Complex: Impacts on Movements for Peace and Social Justice
http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2009/12/21/inside-the-military-media-industrial-complex-impacts-on-movements-for-peace-and-social-justice
Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff

Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq.  This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols.  These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government.  Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began.  In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, “You know we don’t do body counts.”[i] Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.

(  From Opera's Opit's LinkFest!/Links

Deaths from military actions

• Iraq
• Vietnam
• iCasualties
• The Iraq Math War
• Casualties in Iraq - 2009
• War Victims Monitor
• DoD War Casualties - PDF
• The Military Death Toll While Enforcing the Occupation of Iraq )

All manner of ordinary Iraqis have died because the United States decided to invade their country under false pretences of undiscovered weapons of mass destruction and in violation of international law. An additional four to five million Iraqi refugees have fled their homes.The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people a carnage that ranks among the most heinous mass killings in world history.

The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis.  Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country? 

Comments

wisegalah    [Moderator] 1 day ago
7 people liked this.
Years ago one of my special interests was the Apatheid regime of South Africa. At the same time I was a staunch supporter of Israel. I cheered them on in 1967 and when they raided Entebbe in Uganda.
But what puzzled me then were the close ties between Israel and the government of South Africa of that time.

Since then I have come to realise that the connections sprang from a deeply shared ideological position.
The Apartheid policies of the National Party sprang from their persuasion that whites are superior to blacks and that alone justifies any measures to keep power and wealth within the hands of the whites.
The zionists have the same attitude. As the chosen people they consider themselves superior to others and therefore do not have to justify their actions of murder and ethnic cleansing to anybody, Their rationale is the same as that of Hitler in justifying his policy directions under the heading of 'lebensraum'.

Given this the actions of the Israeli 'Defence' Forces are totally explicable. They as the chosen people do not have to answer to anybody and will kill or hound to the very end anybody who attempts to expose their criminal behaviour.

Israel has never been a democracy. It is an apartheid state, founded by terrorists who used criminal means to drive the inhabitants from their lands so that they could seize and colonise them.

Every one of those hailed as heroes of Israel was a criminal. Ben-Gurion, Begin, Rabin, etc, etc. I do not draw any satisfaction to know that one of them, Sharon, rots in hospital bed but have not doubt that his final demise will be met with joy in many quarters.     

Because I constantly flog the file Perception Alteration without the larger relevance spelled out - Corporatism/Fascism and the New World Order ( specifically referred to by George Bush Sr. in his public speeches ! and by the PNAC  - Project for the New American Century
http://my.opera.com/oldephartte/links ), the section dealing with inciting racial and cultural divisions - like harassment of homosexuals - on society ( see Religion at Opera ) may not jump out at one. Yet they are a necessary part of 'Divide and Conquer'. If that doesn't sound ominous...who do you think is conquered ?

At this point I am tempted to segue over to Len Hart's The Existentialist Cowboy for an ongoing revelatory exercise on the 'hijacking' of the Republic.
How the GOP Betrayed Lincoln's Great  Republican Promise
 
Unhappily, I think it was likely never more than a PR exercise. I studied basic  British history in high school and took a habit of reading Jean Plaidy's historical novels - especially on the Tudor period - to heart. The study of the reign of Henry Bolingbroke - Henry VIII - should alert anyone to the nature of rule : force.
No. The Angles and Saxons at Hastings in 1066 knew what 'serfdom' was : an open air slave state. The Great Charter - Magna Carta - of 1215 was a revolt by the hereditary executive ( the nobility ) against runaway 'rendition' : kidnapping, imprisonment and torture by the state....no trial or procedures needed.  It's an interesting read and perspective enhancer even 'translated' and summarized : and includes Habeas Corpus...the inalienable right to face one's accusers in trial.
The Patriot Act and the like put people worldwide in worse case than British land slaves almost 800 years ago on the usual 'grounds' : civil emergency. Mind, the British and Commonwealth have it institutionalized : The War Measures Act.

Tactics of Terror - Declaring Enemies

Too  extreme ?
Congress...where are you ?

Have a look at Law, especially American Service Members Protection Act 2002 and Bilateral Immunity Agreements : which pulls the fangs of the death penalty for War Crimes. That will work at home just as well.